Booker half dozen

 
    On the shortlist for this year's Man Booker Prize are:

Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

Carol Birch, Jamrach's Menagerie  

Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers

Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues

Stephen Kelman, Pigeon English

A.D. Miller, Snowdrops

More details here.

Which of these books fits Arnold Bennett's description of a good novel, I wonder.

The winner will be announced at a dinner at London's Guildhall on Tuesday, 18th. October. 

Comments

[adele geras]

Am very sad not to see Jane Rogers on that list. I haven't read this book but she's such a good writer. Surprised at Hollinghurst not being there and SHOCKED not to see Sebastian Barry on the list. SNOWDROPS is on its way to me from the wonderful newbooks.mag as a free book and it's a thriller so I'm glad it's on the list as a kind of shout for thrillers. Remains to be seen how good it is....I've heard mixed messages. Do not know anything about the others apart from Julian Barnes and I reckon he's probably a good bet. Hope so, anyway. Lots of folk reckon it might be his year and I really hope it is!

[B R Wombat]

I'd read quite a few on the longlist, for once, but the only one which has made it to the shortlist is Snowdrops which I thought was extremely overrated. I can't imagine how it got onto the shortlist or the longlist, for that matter. It was not what I'd call a thriller. Will I get around to reading any of the others on the shortlist? Probably not.

[m]

Predictably, the only one I wanted to read - the Sebastian Barry - has disappeared.

[Cornflower]

Of the six, I've read only Snowdrops, and while I thought it was a good enough book - a competent, solid piece - I wouldn't call it a great one, worthy of winning a major prize, nor is it one I would want to press on people (that's partly due to the sleazy subject-matter and partly down to not being overwhelmed by it). I reviewed it and summed up thus:
"A murky picture of corruption and moral degeneration in which Moscow in all its decadent tawdriness is the star, this is a bleak and chilling novel with a plausible scenario, confessional in style, assured in execution".

[Lindsay]

Barnes has deserved to win for years now, so I hope justice is done - though in the mad, anti-literary world of the Booker (which may be a popular, but is surely not a major, prize)who knows what will happen?

By the way, how does your widget selected the three things underneath each post that "you might also like" - today they were closely connected, but other days leave me baffled!

From Nairobi, en route to the world's newest country before dawn tomorrow! Lindsay

[Mrs.B.]

Interesting. I checked the Bennett quote and I'll have to say The Sense of an Ending does leave one exhausted. I kept thinking about it and analyzing it for days. I still don't 'get' some aspects of it but I do think it deserves a place on the shortlist.

The Bennett quote actually does describe the feeling while reading Snowdrops.

[Cornflower]

Which prizes do you classify as 'major', Lindsay?
(I don't know how the widget works, but it chooses the links - I have no influence!).

[Cornflower]

Interesting that the judges say they have gone for 'readability' this year.

[ctussaud]

I have read Jamrach's Menagerie; great start and a good middle, but the end fell flat. Half Blood Blues didn't grab me, and I gave up on Pigeon English after 100 pages. Am currently reading the Hollingsworth and have the Barnes still to read. A good batch but nothing outstanding so far.

[lindsay]

Prix Goncourt, the Whitbread, and even Nobel - often wildly wrong (the judgement of history, not me) but not populist - and the Pulitzer in the US, and also the PEN-Faulkner I'm told?

[Cornflower]

The Prix Goncourt is for French literature, so in terms of rating the Booker on a scale of majority, it's not directly relevant.
The Whitbread (which has, of course, been the Costa for a few years now) has tended to favour popular over literary fiction, while with the Booker the bias is usually the other way round.
The Nobel doesn't really come into the equation as it's for a body of work rather than a single novel.
As for the Pulitzer and the PEN/Faulkner, American authors only, both, so again, not really relevant to the prizes for which British (/Commonwealth/Irish) books are eligible, and certainly far from exclusively literary.

[Cornflower]

I was going to say that perhaps the Barnes will be the outstanding one, but I've seen such mixed reports of it ... nothing new there, of course!